Half Agony, Half Hope
by volkslieder
Summary: Guy/Marian. Post 2x13, AU. Guy awakes to find Marian in his room. Is she a dream?


**Title:** _Half agony; half hope._  
**Rating:** G  
**Word count:** 1100 words  
**Characters:** Guy/Marian  
**Summary:** Post 2x13, AU. Guy awakes to find Marian in his room. Is she a dream?

**Disclaimer:** Robin Hood is copyright to Tiger Aspect and the BBC. All Rights Reserved. No copyright infringement is intended, and no money is being made.

**A/N:** Written for **maddarilke**, from her lovely picture prompt. (community./guyxmarian/167031.html) I planned to head towards the picture. But Guy and Marian refused to co-operate! (Oh ship, why must you vex me so?) So imagine it as a possible future point, foreshadowed in parts here.

If I was being strictly historical (as I understand it) Guy would probably be sleeping naked. But this is G, so here he is clothed. Perhaps someone else can write the other fic? ;)

I do seem to get creative when I should be studying. It is Not Fair. Also, apologies for the gratuitously Austen-referencing title. It does sum up the fic, I swear! So not too gratuitous.

--

"I know you're there," he said. The soft flick of cloak against clothing, the slow tread of a cautious intruder. Guy knew, yet again, what his mind was pretending. And if he opened his eyes, it would be only the hangings of the bed; caught by the breeze. Or the quick steps of an nervous-eyed maid, coming to stoke the fire. They all had that look around him. Since...since -

"Good." Marian's voice. Guy's eyes shot open and he sat up so quickly his back clicked.

"I think there's been enough pretending," said Marian, quietly. She took a step into the room.

"This is different," Guy said. Marian said nothing, only held his gaze. "You never spoke before. I hear you, sometimes I see you, but then I reach for you - and you're gone..." Sometimes with a smile, sometimes with that final knowing look. _I knew this was you. This was all you were, all along._

"Well, I'm here now," she said. There was a hardness to her, a tight determination to the way she stood. Her arms were clenched to her sides beneath her cloak. She was holding herself together, he thought, willing her mind to move. As he had been this past year.

Shifting to the edge of the bed, he stood. He was so aware of every sound; his step, the rubbing together of his dry lips, the empty quiet of outside. It must be very early in the morning.

A few paces away, he paused. This close, it was impossible to believe she wasn't real. Guy could see the glisten of sweat on her upper lip, a redness at her neck where the cloak had rubbed.

"Marian," somewhere between a moan and a sigh. She closed the door behind her. Took a step closer. A breeze lifted hairs at her forehead, touched the hem of his shirt where it met his breeches. If this was a dream, let him not wake yet.

He raised both hands to her face, pausing a whisper-space away. Then, in a breathless moment, he held her face in his hands. She placed her left hand on his, raising her eyes slowly to meet his. Holding him.

In a flick there was a dagger in his side.

Or - almost. He looked down. Marian was holding it a tiny distance from his side. Slowly, slowly, he moved his hand down to shift hers away - she pressed the blade against his side, the point sharp through his thin linen shirt. He could hear her jolting breaths, sense her heart thrumming, racing in her chest. Marian's hand had begun to shake, hard as she clenched herself to stop it. He could feel the tightness of her jaw against his palm. This could not be a dream, surely.

"Why?" asked Guy. Marian looked as though she would spit in his face.

"After everything that has happened, you dare to ask me why?"

He shifted. She pressed the point harder again.

"_You killed me._" she hissed. "You claimed you love me."

"I did. I do."

"What is your love, Sir Guy of Gisborne," she said, her voice hard with mocking, "but possession. A selfish need to have me for your own."

"I only wanted you safe," he said, weakly. "If you had only listened to - if you hadn't gone to the Holy Land - if you had let me take care of you..." his words sounded as empty as ever, cried at a parade of accusing apparitions that were always as unconvinced as the Marian here now.

"You do not love me, Gisborne." That word, an echo of Hood in her mouth. It cut him. "You love a Marian that does not exist. Some simpering pie-making baby-birthing silently adoring lackbrain."

"That is not true." Perhaps once, before he realised all of what she was. Through the months since, he'd found he missed her mind (even their sparring) as much as any glistening future.

"It is what you would have had me become. If...if..."

Both were breathing raggedly now. Guy's mind was all anxious reckoning and guilty memories.

"Once, yes. Not now." He willed his eyes to speak the honesty he placed on every syllable. "I love you. I want you. All of you." Oh, his words sounded so _foolish_. Overspoken, by acres of kitchen boys and drunken rogues and heartsick fools. And true men, who couldn't help but use the same words.

"You killed me. You wanted to kill me. If not for Djaq -"

"I have not ceased hating myself for it."

"I am not your redemption, Gisborne. I am not come to be your purifying Virgin."

"I know." He took a breath, a deep steadying breath, and felt her do the same. He would regret it, but he must ask.

"Where...where is Hood?"

"Dead." He half-expected her eyes to grow tearful with sorrow but they did not. They narrowed in anger.

"He was killed. Fighting with King Richard. Much and Eve. Djaq has Will. Allan has Sarah. And I have no-one. Because of you." With that last word, she nicked his side. He would not wince.

"I wanted him to stay with me," she dropped her eyes, "I wanted him safe." She raised her eyes to his again. It was if he could see the memories, could sense them from the frustration that mixed with regret in her face. Pleading, quick sharp words. Always self-reproach, later, once alone. But nothing ever changed. Not so far.

"He refused," she continued, eyes hard on his again. "Said he must be what he believed in, not just speak it. And now...now he is gone." Months of loss across her face, for a moment.

"I have been so angry with you. So angry, for so long. It has burned away in here," her left hand struck at her chest, "until I thought I would lose my mind to the heat of it. You were so much - promised so much - and then - you were nothing. Blacker than nothing."

"I know."

"So I am come to kill you. And yet," she stepped back, out of his hands, "I find I cannot." An edge of hope flickered in his chest.

"I will not be like you," she said, and lowered her dagger.

"Marian," he lingered over the name, "Oh Marian. I am changed." He felt it. He believed it.

"I do not believe it. I will not believe it."

"You will not let me show you?"

He reached out to her, his hand slow and uncertain. He remembered a firelit room where she had done the same. Her eyes had the same look - captured in uncertainty and longing. His willed her to stay.

"I do not know," she said. And with that, she was gone. She left the door open behind her, a barren space showing the familiar view into the castle hall beyond.

He could hear her footsteps growing quieter. He could feel her skin, still, against his palms. Not a dream. She had not been a dream.

--

_end._


End file.
